Professional Futures/Professional Practice Evaluation

My last CV

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My new CV

After my meeting with Mr Watts in Careers, he suggested how to make my CV much better. He gave me advice on writing a covering letter and sent me some links to jobs to apply for. So I got on with updating my CV applied to the jobs. I wrote covering letters differing on what the job was asking for. I still do not feel confident they will lead anywhere but if you dont try you dont get anywhere.

The good points are it feels great to have clear careers guidance because back when I was on Jobseekers, I really wasn't getting anywhere, I didn't feel like the careers advisors there cared at all to actually get people a job, they just try to get you off Jobseekers allowance as soon as possible. However here I feel the staff are friendly and super helpful and are genuinely caring.

My start of the project doing Fashion Collaboration was great to give me some work to do for people instead of shooting and retouching for myself. I need to push myself into these things more, to network more and meet new people that might want me to work for them. 

I decided to have an online portfolio as it is the easiest quickest way to show people my work. It is easily accessible, in these modern times everyone has access to the internet 24/7 so it made sense to show digital work in a digital format. I do miss having prints though as I love the feel and look of printed paper. my online portfolio is here: http://petethor.co.uk/category/retouching/

I made friends with a previous graduate of the course, he has helped me tons to get my website up and running, I am so grateful as it is something I feel is almost beyond me. It is great to see a graduate from the course succeeding in something after uni and gives me hope for myself.

My artist Statement is: 

A fairly diverse photographer in his career so far, coming from covering events, music concerts, working with models and shooting underwater photography; he is primarily concerned with aspects surrounding Landscape Photography: narratives and topology within the boundaries of social definitions.Currently continuing work surrounding land under both decay and development. He is also developing a photographic document surrounding his own life and the mundane idiosyncrasies’ within it.

It is the first page on my website and can be viewed here: http://petethor.co.uk/about/

I learned from what we were taught, I wanted it to be clear, straight forwards and not have any waffle, of course I wrote it in the 3rd person, and bounced ideas off my contemporaries.

Evaluation

My start with the fashion collaboration was fun, a good thing to put in my portfolio. Shooting, researching, dealing with models, arranging shoots, working with assistants, dress designers and making sure lighting, backgrounds and wind machines worked. I feel I could have done better to pose the models and had more inspired ideas.
retuching went well, I worked really hard and the designers really appreciated it. This led to me teaming up with one of the designers to help her do some photos for a personal project, which went well. The project was for her to show in an interview for a university, which she later told me she was accepted for!

My initial ideas were true to myself, and I am sure I will try to do them at some point in the future to really realise their potential. I am glad I spoke about them in tutorials as I feel they are much weaker ideas, even if I had strong compositions, I did not have enough reason to be doing the projects.

I tried to do as much research, and to vary my research from photographers I love to get more insight and to open my mind to other ideas. I think this really helped to get me more ideas and think about things in a different perspective. I always feel I could have done more research, as there is just so much out there to discover and often I talk to my friends and course-mates, and it seems they are discovering artists that I just dont know about.

I tried to think of looking for jobs in a new original perspective, I still feel I am struggling, I went to see the careers advisor at uni, and I still have a ways to go on writing a good covering letter and CV, but I feel I am starting to get there with the CV. I still feel worried about looking for civilian work, I guess I am a confident person, but not so confident at selling myself. I feel confident in my retouching skills, but there is so much competition, I wonder how to get above the competition. Working hard and networking hopefully will pay off.

I feel I should have gone to more galleries, there are many things I wanted to see. But student finance don't exactly allow me much spare money to travel to and around London and for entry fee's, even with student discount life is too tight to go often. It seems like each time I go I can only average 2-3 galleries per visit, then it starts to get to 1700 or 1800 and galleries close. How does it take so long to walk around a gallery and stand on the tube?

My 5x4 work took a long time to start to start to take shape. I think using the slower larger format helped me to think precisely what I was shooting and why. I still think my original photographs on 5x4 film were weak, but they helped me to realise a new idea and to understand what I wanted to photographically.

My use of paper was really interesting, and helped me to push the boundaries of what I thought possible with photography. It was intense shooting with the paper as before I shot I really had no idea what to expect, and whether the exposures would even be usable. I love seeing the images arrive in the developer, I think it is as exciting as shooting the pictures originally.
The 10x8 camera was something else. Very difficult to transport, very difficult to use, but so rewarding for the tones and the sharpness. If I was to do anything differently I guess I would take more care of the tripod, as I am used to quick release plates, where the plate just stays on the camera the whole time, but I manged to lose two tripod screws just because the came loose and dropped out while walking with the camera.

I think the build went well and the hanging was stressful but it got done and I felt some people pulled together to make it happen. I wasn't too happy about lazy people not turning up, and I thought that when people stood around bitching about them, that was almost as bad, if they would just pick up the slack and get on with it, the work would be done quicker and there would be nothing to complain about.
I tried to help people as much as I could and I left each day aching sore and exhausted. But it just had to be done, I wouldn't have felt I had worked as hard as I could if I was fresh each evening and had no worries on my mind.
If I was to do hanging different I would have paid more attention to what was happening with other people as I put up a text panel with my work before I realised it didn't fit with the uniform text panel we were all meant to use. I tried to keep up with the emails, but when I was that busy and that tired every night I fell behind, and I couldnt follow the facebook group we set up because I would receive hundreds of notifications every day mostly from people complaining about the course instead of making the most of their time at UCA, I got sick of the arguing so I stopped following it as for a time there was nothing useful for me to read.

Overall I think my project went well but I always feel there is more I could have done.

I chose "Untitled Kairos" for my title. Researching Kairos and Chronos was really inspiring, it helped me to push forwards with my ideas surrounding my project. Kairos seemed the natural title for the project. about the opportune moment, and time passing in an unmeasurable way. It is still Untitled as each moment is an untitled moment in the whole passage of time.

Evaluation of Project

Over this project I have learnt so much. I learnt about book binding and how to do it. I found the thinkness of the needle really helps bind the book and having the holes punched to the size of the needle rather than to the size of the string makes it so much easier to thread. I learnt to tighten the string by pulling upwards and downwards, never across the book as it might pull it apart. and i learnt that i really enjoy making books even though i dont like stitching. The printing was so hard to get right and i made many mistakes but i know know what settings to use when printing. I am proud of the books i made.

I learnt so much about using Adobe Premiere Pro, just how to use the basic functions was hard for me and i finally started to get it and i feel i have made a decent video in it.

I have learnt about some artists who use text and different narrative structures from books and films and photography series. I t was really interesting seeing how the different mediums compare to each other and how they can have similar approaches and different approaches to show a story.

If i could go back and change things i would definitely do more research into snpachat and artists who use texts as i feel i could find much more, so i would change how i managed my time as i spent most of my time in this project progressing my ideas and learning new skills as opposed to analysing artists i had not previously heard about. and i think i would do more research into films as they seem like a great example of how narrative structures can be used.

Another thing i would change is my attendance of tutorials, I feel i could have gone to more and seen as many tutors as possible to get lots of feedback but i didnt. Unfortunately some things in my personal life to do with this project got in the way and i was unable to make it to a couple of tutorials and this had a negative effect on my work and it took a bit of time to get back into the swing of things

I have immensely enjoyed this project for the most part, especially how busy it is and how many new skills i have had to learn and re-getting to know my friend was also amazing. on the downside as of course with any project there were downsides when things went wrong and it got stressful to do certain things.

I would like to continue this project and see where it takes me, so i could make lots of books showing a full progression of getting to know someone over a period of years, it would be so interesting to photograph our social interactions over a period of years. Perhaps also i can make different books of different people that i interact with.